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Chapter 1: What led Zoe and Brian to Greece for their honeymoon?
I'm Clark Peters, and this is Founding Fathers, An American Dream. In a sweltering room in Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson writes the Declaration of Independence. In an open valley, George Washington leads a ragtag army against the mighty British Empire. And in New York City, a furious crowd tears down a statue of the king. 250 years ago, the United States of America was born.
But how did the people overthrow British rule? How did they invent a radical new nation? And who lost out along the way? From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Founding Fathers, An American Dream. The real story of how the U.S. was created and why its legacies still matter. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
It's Monday, July the 23rd, 2018. In the coastal town of Mati, located some 30 kilometers east of Athens on the Greek mainland, the temperature has been rising steadily throughout the morning. By noon, it's pushing 40 degrees centigrade, over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
The streets are quiet, the atmosphere soporific, as people take refuge from the heat inside their shuttered houses or sip coffee in the shade of local tavernas. Nestled against a picture-perfect backdrop of rolling scrub hills, a beautiful villa gleams in the glaring sunshine, the fierce light casting dappled patterns through the smooth, clear waters of the property's private pool.
The air echoes with a gentle hum of cicadas, and a warm, pine-scented wind blows through the open door from the terrace into the house. Inside is a haven of cool, calm darkness, the only sound coming from the rhythmic, ceaseless whir of the air conditioning.
Upstairs, in the master bedroom, a newly married couple in their forties lie sleeping beneath a thin cotton sheet, having been driven inside by the ferocious midday sun. This is Zoe Holohan and her husband of just four days, Brian O'Callaghan Westrop. It's the beginning of their honeymoon, and they're making the most of the chance to relax and unwind in their stunning surroundings.
After an hour or two, Brian stirs and wakes, then rolls out of bed and walks down the stairs, not waking his sleeping wife. Zoe remains, lost in peaceful slumber. Until, seconds later, she hears Brian screaming her name.
His voice had such a tone of urgency that obviously I woke up with a shock.
Dazed, Zoe scrambles out of bed and heads towards Brian. Whatever is happening, it's clearly an emergency. She runs to the top of the stairs.
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Chapter 2: What unexpected events occurred during their honeymoon?
In this episode, we meet Zoe Holan. In July 2018, she and her husband Brian traveled to Greece to enjoy a relaxing honeymoon, having tied the knot just days before.
But what should be one of the happiest times of their lives soon morphs into a horror story right before their eyes, when Zoe and Brian wake from a siesta and find themselves trapped in one of the worst natural disasters in the country's recent history.
You know, we were on honeymoon. We were hoping we could finally get to unwind. And then, of course, we woke up the following day on July 23rd and it all went terribly, terribly wrong from there.
Racing against time, the couple face a desperate scramble to escape before it's too late. But despite their best efforts, it seems that fate is set against them as they encounter hurdle after hurdle and safety continues to elude them. How much bad luck can two people endure before tragedy finally strikes?
It's, in my opinion, a miracle actually anybody got out of there alive. What happened next was absolutely catastrophic.
I'm John Hopkins. From the Noisa Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories. It's Sunday, July the 22nd, 2018. The sun hangs like a blazing disk of gold over the eastern coast of Attica, a peninsula in the heartland of Greece. Here, dusty hills dotted with tall pines and gnarled olive trees give way to the tranquil waters of the Aegean.
This is an area steeped in history and culture, and has become a prime destination for holidaymakers, its proximity to Athens making it ideal for international tourists. In the bustling seaside town of Mati, just up the coast from the port of Rafina, a hire car trundles along narrow, labyrinthine streets.
Inside, newly married couple Zoe Holohan and Brian O'Callaghan Westrop scan their surroundings, squinting into the dazzling sunlight as they search for the villa they have booked for their honeymoon. Eventually, the building comes into sight. Brian and Zoe drive through the tall electric gate that guards its driveway, then park up outside the property.
Here, they are greeted by the villa's owner, who gives them a tour and supplies helpful information for their stay. In addition to providing restaurant recommendations and directions to local attractions, she also warns them that the area can be prone to power cuts and gives instructions on how to manually open the gate if the electricity fails.
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Chapter 3: How did Zoe and Brian react when they discovered the wildfire?
We're in the car. We're going to zoom out of this. And the car will protect us from the flames.
There's no time to lose. Brian grabs the key fob for the electric gate at the bottom of the drive and jams his thumb down on the buzzer. The gate doesn't move. Alarmed, he presses the button again, but nothing happens.
We tried to open the buzzer on the gate and the gate wouldn't budge. And then we realized, Jesus Christ, the electricity has been cut off.
They're trapped. When Zoe and Brian arrived the day before, the villa's owner warned them about the potential for power cuts in this area and left them an Allen key to manually unlock the gate if needed. But the key is back inside.
Brian ran back into the house, told me to stay in the car to get the Allen key. I mean, this is all so time sensitive because every second counts. Ran in, eventually he found it. It could have been seconds, it felt like hours. And he came back out. Now at this stage, the flames were pretty much surrounding the car.
Brian got to the gate and wasted crucial, crucial minutes trying everything to winch open this bloody gate. I got out of the car. I had to get out his side because the passenger side was now surrounded by flames and tried to help him open and we just couldn't. We couldn't open the gate.
Zoe and Brian fumble with the Allen key, hauling at the gate as the heat builds mercilessly at their backs. But it's no use. They whirl around, searching for any other exit. As they do so, they see that their car has been swallowed by the fire. Even if they could open the gate now, there's no way they can get back in their vehicle.
Their only choice is to scale the three meter high gate and make a run for it on foot. Losing no time, Zoe bunches up her long white dress and Brian pushes her up. She clambers over the top of the barrier, then tumbles down the other side. She lands hard on the ground, her new wedged sandals colliding with the concrete as her left leg twists at an unnatural angle.
Searing pain stabs through her knee.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did they face while trying to escape the flames?
And I started to describe him. I started to describe his tattoos. I said, where, you know, that man who saved me, he's there. Tell him to go back. And he said, no, no one's going back there. No one's going back there to that.
When an ambulance does finally arrive to take Zoe to hospital, things somehow get even worse.
It was a horrific journey. The ambulance drivers were not kind people. They were laughing. They told me to shut up when I started to cry about my husband. So then I shut up and I just thought to myself, well, it doesn't really matter anyway. Brian's dead and I'm going to be dead soon.
After a brutal journey, Zoe is stretched into hospital and left on a trolley, inside an emergency department in Pandemonium. The air reeks of blood, smoke, and burnt flesh, and there are people everywhere. The wildfire has clearly been devastating, and in the chaos, not everyone is seen to. After several hours, Zoe is eventually moved out of the emergency department to a room on another floor.
And here, she is once again left without medical attention.
No pain relief. I can't describe to you what severe burns feel like. My eye was cooked shut at this stage, and I actually did catch a glimpse of my face in a window. My face had totally melted. Cooked. I could hardly move my limbs at this stage. The burns on my legs and my hand were so severe, they went right down to the bones. So the bones were actually burned. But they left me there.
I called to a nurse who was walking up and down. who told me she couldn't give me any pain medication, in perfect English, she couldn't give me any pain medication until I'd been seen by a doctor. I was just begging for anything, something. And I just lay there thinking, I'm surely going to die in this hellhole.
Zoe endures a long, dreadful night. It's only when representatives of the Irish Embassy get involved the following morning that things change. She is assessed by a doctor and finally given pain relief, many hours after first arriving. Bizarrely, throughout her ordeal, she has managed to hold onto her handbag containing the essentials she picked up before evacuating the villa.
Inside it is her health insurance card, a small plastic rectangle, that at this moment in time makes all the difference. Zoe's cover affords her private healthcare, and that very day the embassy representatives manage to get her transferred to a private hospital.
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Chapter 5: How did Zoe and Brian's survival instincts kick in during the crisis?
He was the most beautiful soul. He taught me how to see beauty everywhere. And yeah, missing Anne Brown to this day. But it was also my way of, I don't know, thanking all the people. the phenomenal medical community. And then what happened halfway along as I was writing those, I kind of realized there was this story unfolding that I believe is quite extraordinary.
It's extraordinary because I'm still here. You know, I sometimes think, well, really, I shouldn't be. I should have died in the fire. I should have died from sepsis. You know, I should have died from multiple organ failure, but I didn't. And there was something that kept me here. And I started to think, well, then what do I do with that?
If I've been given this gift of a second chance at life, well, then I better bloody well do something good with it.
And that's exactly what Zoe does. Her book is a bestseller, and in time she becomes an inspirational speaker, sharing her story of fortitude with others.
Things developed, and I realized that the message I wanted to give out was genuinely one of resilience and proving resilience. That as human beings, we are much stronger than we often give ourselves credit for. We're phenomenal. Humans are phenomenal. And I wanted, particularly at the moment, you know, the world is a very frightening place at the moment.
There's a lot of anger and hatred out there. And I wanted to share and I continue to want to share the message that there's absolutely beautiful, pure goodness out there, too.
The 2018 Attica wildfires were at the time the deadliest scene in Europe in the 21st century. They devastated thousands of homes and resulted in over 100 deaths, including that of Brian. Incredibly, everyone else in the car carrying Brian and Zoe survived after the crash, including the five children they instinctively saved from the flames.
Zoe's life changed forever after the fire, and her journey remains ongoing to this day. Despite the horrors she endured, she has refused to let them define her or prevent her from living a good life. It is a phoenix-like story of recovery.
You can't turn back the clock. You can't bring back people who were killed. And you can't, you know, wind back the clock and get me back the body or the mind that I used to have. But I will say that I don't want to carry anger and bitterness with me in my soul as I move forward either, you know, and I strive really to live a happy life.
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